Translator: CinderTL
The rough metal enclosure wall of Rust Town had collapsed in multiple places, its burning wreckage and icy energy scorch marks intertwining as testaments to the brutal battle.
The air was thick with the acrid smell of ozone, molten metal, and a strange, incense-like aroma of ashes.
The battle had become a one-sided slaughter.
Clang!
Durga's Battleaxe, capable of cleaving mountains and shattering stone, struck an enemy's shoulder and neck, but only erupted in a blinding shower of sparks, producing a despairing metallic clang.
The enemy, a slender humanoid figure seemingly composed of obsidian and solidified lava, merely swayed slightly.
Beneath the lava-like cracks on its surface, a dark red light flowed as the strike left only a shallow white mark that visibly regenerated at an astonishing rate.
"What the hell is this thing?" Durga roared, forced to retreat in disarray by an energy whip conjured with a casual flick of the enemy's wrist.
A blackened scorch mark marred his sturdy chest plate, sending searing pain through him.
His vaunted strength and combat techniques proved utterly futile against these silent, unyielding foes.
The grey dwarf warriors' battle lines had long since been shattered.
Roaring furiously, they launched a desperate charge with their warhammers and axes, but their enemies' attacks defied comprehension.
Some enemies extended energy whips from their bodies, like living vipers that effortlessly crushed weapons and tore through armor.
Others instantly reshaped their arms into massive energy warhammers...
Boom!
Shields warped, warriors were sent flying backward, and the solid formation was torn open by a gaping hole.
"Galvis!"
Avril's clear, cold voice rang out as she darted through the rubble like a nimble leopard, trying to create an opening for her comrades.
"I'm trying! But these monsters' minds—they're forged from steel and flame! My melodies can barely penetrate!"
Galvis stood on a nearby vantage point, his face pale, fingers frantically plucking the strings of his lute. The mind-bending melody surged toward the towering black figures in invisible waves, yet it only stirred faint ripples around their featureless heads—which glowed with a single bright light—before being completely nullified.
Seeing this, he began playing a war song to boost morale.
Faint light fell upon Durga and the grey dwarf, barely sustaining them from immediate collapse.
On the entire battlefield, Avril was the only one who could still barely hold her ground and even launch effective counterattacks.
The Elven Ranger moved through the ruins like the wind, her speed so great that she left afterimages in her wake. The string of her enchanted longbow never ceased its motion.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Three arrows flew in a triangular formation toward an enemy raising an energy warhammer.
They didn't fly straight; instead, they arced in bizarre trajectories, striking the enemy's knee joint, elbow, and the "face" burning with ember-like light.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The Penetration Runes attached to the arrows took effect, embedding themselves in the enemy's body and disrupting its attack.
Yet no joy flickered in Avril's eyes, only deep solemnity.
She could sense the feedback from the arrows was unnaturally sluggish, as if they had struck dense alloy rather than flesh and blood.
Moreover, no blood flowed from the wounds—only shimmering particles of energy that radiated with nauseating light.
The minor wounds were rapidly healing.
"The mana here... it's so sluggish!" Avril thought anxiously.
In a normal environment, she could easily channel more powerful natural mana into her arrows, creating area-of-effect spells like explosions or freezing. But here, she had to expend several times the mental power just to "squeeze" a trickle of power from this "Mana Mire," and the results were severely diminished.
Her strength was being severely suppressed by the very nature of this world.
One enemy seemed to have identified her as the greatest threat, abandoning its other targets to charge straight at her. Its arms transformed into blades of dark red energy, slicing through the air with a piercing shriek. The creature launched a frenzied, storm-like assault.
Gritting her teeth, Avril pushed her ranger's agility to its limits. She danced on the edge of death, each dodge a near-miss. The energy blades grazed her hair and the hem of her clothes, leaving deep, scorched marks in the ground.
Occasionally, she seized fleeting opportunities to counterattack. Her arrows collided with the energy blades, erupting in small bursts of chaotic energy.
After a moment, she saw her chance. As the enemy's blades crossed in a downward strike, its chest was left wide open.
"Now!"
A resolute glint flashed in Avril's eyes.
She no longer held back, forcefully draining her mental power and forcing the connection between herself and the world, pouring all her available mana into a single arrow.
The bow drew taut like a full moon, the arrow streaked like a meteor.
Whoosh!
A hyper-condensed arrow, swirling with spiral patterns of emerald and silver-white energy, pierced the enemy's chest like a dawn breaking through darkness. It struck the Ashlight Core with speed far exceeding any of her previous attacks.
The enemy's forward momentum froze abruptly. The light on its "face" flickered violently, its surface cracks rapidly expanding as crimson light spilled uncontrollably from within.
Finally, with a low hum like collapsing energy structures, it crashed to the ground. Its body shattered into countless lusterless black fragments, the light in its core extinguished completely.
"I did it!"
Yet the arrow had nearly drained the elf girl's strength.
Her face turned as pale as paper, her body swaying. She used her longbow to support herself, gasping for breath.
Sweat soaked the hair at her temples as her inner strength drained away like an ebbing tide. A wave of overwhelming weakness washed over her.
But the crisis was far from over.
Her act of killing a companion seemed to enrage the remaining enemies.
They simultaneously halted their attacks on other targets, their featureless "faces" of burning embers all turning to "stare" at the exhausted Avril.
The sensation of being locked onto by multiple cold, inhuman wills sent a chill down Avril's spine.
Two of the enemies reshaped their arms into razor-sharp blades and advanced toward her with steady, oppressive strides.
Durga roared, trying to charge to her rescue, but was pinned down by another enemy.
Galvis frantically strummed his lute, but could no longer conjure any effective disruptions.
Despair gripped everyone's hearts like an icy vise.
Just as the two enemies' attacks were about to strike the helpless Avril, who was unable to dodge...
A figure descended from the darkness beyond Rust Town like a meteor tearing through the night sky, arriving with unparalleled speed and power.
Boom!
The moment the figure landed, it was as if a meteor had struck the center of the battlefield.
The terrifying force sent a violent tremor through the ground, and web-like cracks spread wildly from the impact point.
The shockwave, carrying gravel and dust, spread in a ring, sending the nearest enemies stumbling.
Even the aftershock of his arrival revealed a power far greater than anyone present possessed.
As the dust settled, the survivors, still shaken, looked up to see a figure standing half-crouched in the center of the crater. Clad in sleek, dark silver armor that covered his entire body, he exuded a cold, majestic presence and an aura of advanced technology.
The visor of his full-face helmet, a narrow, ice-blue slit, swept across the scene with emotionless efficiency.
"A-another one?" Durga's heart sank.
"Is he with those monsters?"
However, Avril's gaze immediately locked onto the longsword at the newcomer's waist. Even in the dim light, it flowed with a moonlight-like radiance. She would never mistake that unique design and energy signature.
"It's Roland!" she cried out, her voice filled with the relief and disbelief of someone who had narrowly escaped death.
But Roland didn't immediately respond to the elf girl's call.
The instant Avril spoke, one of the closest enemies swung a dark red energy blade, its formation accompanied by a air-rending shriek, and brought it down on Roland's head.
Without even turning, Roland simply swung his Radiant Moon Longsword in a backhanded motion. The blade, trailing a cold silver light, met the energy blade with perfect precision.
Bang!
The expected scene of the energy blade being easily shattered did not materialize.
An ear-splitting explosion, far louder than any metal collision, erupted.
Energy and strength clashed violently, the released shockwave distorting the very air.
A heavy, domineering force, tinged with a strange corrosive quality, reverberated through Roland's wrist. His heart sank slightly.
He channeled strength through his arm, and the immense power provided by the Source Law Engine erupted instantly, forcefully repelling the enemy—both the creature and its "blade"—several steps back.
Seizing the opportunity, Roland focused his ice-blue visor on the enemy for the first time.
Their slender, elegant forms seemed carved from the finest obsidian, their bodies covered in cracks like flowing lava. Beneath these fissures pulsed a dim crimson light.
They lacked facial features, their "faces" replaced by a humanoid shape of blazing light.
But what drew Roland's attention was not their bizarre appearance, but—
"This sensation—"
A faint yet utterly familiar aura emanated from the enemies.
This wasn't a matter of energy properties, but a deeper resonance stemming from the very essence of life.
Roland focused his spirit, his transcendent perception granted by the Source Law Engine acting like the most precise probe. In an instant, it captured and analyzed the source of this familiar sensation:
Dragon bloodline!
Though extremely diluted, as if diluted and modified countless times, its essence was undeniably the same origin as the draconic power surging within him.
"How is this possible?"
A shock as vast as a tsunami crashed against Roland's mind, yet his movements never faltered.
His longsword swept in a full-powered arc.
At that moment, the other two enemies lunged simultaneously, their arms transforming into a burning energy whip and a spiked warhammer, sealing off Roland's left and right flanks.
Facing this coordinated assault—enough to put Avril and the others in dire straits—Roland, beneath his helmet, merely snorted coldly.
Source Law Engine, full power.
With a thought, the massive blood-colored battle qi erupted like a waking dragon.
But the battle qi didn't merely cling to him. Under the Source Law Engine's precise control, it instantly coalesced on his left arm into a monstrous, tangible dragon-head tower shield, which steadily blocked the warhammer's crushing blow.
Thud!
The tower shield remained motionless amidst the thunderous impact, instead sending the massive hammer into a dazzling, chaotic shimmer.
Simultaneously, his right wrist flickered, and the Radiant Moon Longsword emitted a clear, resonant hum.
On its blade, silver light, blood-colored Battle Qi, and a trace of activated magic element fused perfectly under his will.
He abandoned intricate sword techniques, opting for a simple horizontal slash.
Whoosh!
A crescent-shaped wave of destructive energy, a mixture of three colors, erupted from his center.
The energy whip, the first to bear the brunt, shattered and vanished inch by inch, like ice melting under the spring sun.
The wave then swept unimpeded through the attackers' bodies.
No violent collision, no ear-splitting noise.
The two powerful enemies, their bodies capable of withstanding the force of Durga's Battleaxe, dissolved silently before the mixed energy wave. Like ice cubes tossed into a steel furnace, they vaporized and vanished from the waist up, without a trace.
Crushing.
A true, overwhelming, and unstoppable crushing.
The remaining enemies froze momentarily, their movements halting under the shock of this incomprehensible power.
Roland gave them no time to react.
He moved like a phantom.
His Radiant Moon Longsword stabbed and slashed, each strike empowered by the coordinated force of the Source Law Engine. Whether it was energy shields or hardened bodies, they crumbled before him like paper.
In mere moments, the remaining enemies lay shattered on the ground.
The battle was over, but before the survivors could cheer, Galvis pointed at the wreckage and screamed in horror.
"You—you all look! They—they're changing!"
Under everyone's gaze, the corpses—once composed of obsidian and molten rock, their life force extinguished—began to visibly decay and dissolve. Their hardened shells and glow faded, as if shedding a disguise to reveal their true forms.
The skin turned a sickly gray, smooth and hairless. The eye sockets were filled with a murky, ghastly white—
"This is..."
Roland removed his helmet, revealing a grim expression.
It was the same grotesque humanoid creature he had encountered in the deep tunnels of Observation Post No. 7.
(End of the Chapter)
---------------------------
📖 You are reading [264] Chapters behind with [104] Free Chapters available on site.
🔥 Read up to Chapter [704] now, only on ᴄɪɴᴅᴇʀᴛʟ.ᴄᴏᴍ.
📊 [17] Novels, [14.4K+] Chapters with [11.2K+] Free Chapters!, [23M] Words on ℂ𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣𝕋𝕃.𝕔𝕠𝕞
---------------------------